Author's Corner-Virgil Discussing The Gift To Be Simple

AUTHOR’S CORNER

FALCON BOOKS INTERVIEWS

EXPLORING LITERATURE

With Virgil

Virgil is a writer and published author on magic. He is a Christian magician who has worked extensively with Franz Bardon’s system of magic and enjoys sharing his insights through various outlets. He is currently the author of four books – The Spirit of Magic, The Elemental Equilibrium, The Covert Side of Initiation, and The Gift to be Simple – and runs the blog Living Franz Bardon. Although he enjoys sharing his insights, he enjoys encouraging others to share theirs even more. For this reason, during the summer of 2019, Virgil organized the first Franz Bardon community fundraiser, which resulted in the publication of the collaborative book Equipoise: Insights into Foundational Astral Training. This book is a compilation of essays and poems about magical equilibrium written by over two dozen students and initiates of Franz Bardon’s system, and all profits from its sales go to the Best Friends Animal Society.

Falcon Books: During previous discussions with us about The Gift to be Simple, you stated that this book has a smaller target audience than most Bardon-related books do. Can you explain why this is the case?

Virgil: In order to understand why this is the case, it is important to remember that there is a difference between Bardon students and Bardon enthusiasts. Sometimes, a person is both a Bardon student and a Bardon enthusiast, but this isn’t always the case. There are many Bardon students, such as myself, who aren’t Bardon enthusiasts. There are also many Bardon enthusiasts who aren’t Bardon students. Most Bardon-related books on the market appeal to both Bardon students and Bardon enthusiasts. As for this book, it was written with only Bardon students in mind. I don’t think Bardon enthusiasts will derive much enjoyment from reading this book. They may enjoy reading about the Bardon system, but this book isn’t about the Bardon system. It’s about how to work through the Bardon system. The number of Bardon students in the world is small compared to the number of Bardon enthusiasts, which is why I say that this book has a smaller target audience than most Bardon-related books.

2. Falcon Books: In this book, you talk about how urinating mindfully will cause you to advance along the magical path. Why did you choose this example to demonstrate the importance of mindfulness?

Virgil: My point is that doing anything mindfully will cause you to advance along the magical path. I use this particular example because it is perhaps a bit jolting, and therefore does a good job of waking people up to the fact that magical training isn’t something you just do when you are sitting in your asana in your practice room. Magical training is something you do in the car, in the kitchen, and even in the bathroom. Everyone who has read IIH knows that mindfulness is the second mental exercise of Step 1, and since it is one of the exercises in IIH, any time that you spend mindfully is time spent on your magical training. When you cook mindfully, drive mindfully, or urinate mindfully, you are engaged in magical training. Mindfulness is really something that can be practiced every waking moment. You can’t practice visualization or pore breathing every waking moment, but you can practice mindfulness every waking moment. If you practice mindfulness every waking moment, then you will constantly be advancing along the magical path and you will fly past all of the students who don’t practice mindfulness every waking moment. This is why mindfulness is so important.

3. Falcon Books: In The Gift to be Simple, you state that it is better to read books about mindfulness instead of books about Qabalah. Can you share the reasoning behind this statement?

Virgil: You need to have a good understanding of mindfulness in order to become an initiate. Not only is it the key to mastering the Step 1 mental exercises, it is the foundation of the entire mental aspect of the training. When is the last time you found mindfulness-related advice in a book about Qabalah? It doesn’t matter if you know which path on the Tree of Life that every Hebrew letter corresponds to, or if you can eloquently explain the difference between Ain Soph and Ain Soph Aur. If you don’t understand mindfulness, then you won’t get far. This is why in my book I say you should read books about mindfulness, and that you should throw out your books on Qabalah. The most that a book about Qabalah can do for a beginning student is clutter his or her room.

4. Falcon Books: Do you think everyone has the potential to work through IIH before the end of their current lifetime?

Virgil: I have to be careful in answering this question because I don’t want to give the impression that magic is for everyone. In one of his essays, William Mistele writes that you should only undergo magical training if you are called to become a magician, or if you are dealing with a problem that cannot be solved without the use of magic. I agree with this. While I don’t think anyone who doesn’t meet at least one of these two criteria should study magic, I do think that anyone who does meet at least one of these two criteria has the potential to work through IIH. However, not every potential is realized, so the fact that you have the potential to work through IIH doesn’t guarantee that you will ultimately succeed in working through IIH. If you really train, then you will get better, and you will eventually reach Step 10 and complete it. However, most people who attempt to work through IIH won’t even reach the intermediate steps. This is because what they’re doing isn’t so much training as it is repeatedly becoming distracted. First, they become distracted by one thing, and then by another thing, and they call this training.

I’ve discussed this problem of becoming distracted in my previous writings, where I point out that the occult world is full of distractions. Enochian magic, folk magic, and the grimoires may be interesting to some people, but are they relevant to the exercises of IIH? In this book, however, I go a step further and point out that even the Bardon world is full of distractions. This is something that some students of the Bardon system are going to have a difficult time wrapping their minds around. If you are a student of the Bardon system, then anything Bardon-related must be relevant to you, right? Actually, that is not correct, and I explain quite clearly why that is not correct in the book. Training in the Bardon system means being focused on your advancement. If you are not focused, then you are playing around instead of training. Too many people think they’re training when they really aren’t, and then they wonder why they are still stuck on Step 1 after several years of pseudo-training. My hope is that The Gift to be Simple helps people understand what real training is by making them aware of all the distractions that prevent them from truly focusing. In this way, they can turn their potential to work through IIH into a manifest reality.

5. Falcon Books: It seems like it is more difficult to identify Bardon-related distractions than general occult distractions. Is this true?

Virgil: Many students erroneously assume that anything Bardon-related is relevant to their training. That just isn’t the case. To give an extreme example, imagine if some company desperate to profit off of Bardon’s fame started making Bardon bobbleheads, Bardon coffee mugs, and Bardon jigsaw puzzles. Would buying these bobbleheads, coffee mugs, and jigsaw puzzles help a student advance through IIH? Should time spent shopping for these items be considered time spend on one’s magical training? Of course not! Currently, no one is selling Bardon bobbleheads, Bardon coffee mugs, or Bardon jigsaw puzzles. As of now (I am writing this on 9/3/2020), commercialization of the Bardon system has not yet reached that level. However, the fact remains that not every Bardon-related thing will help you advance along the magical path. When you liberate yourself from the erroneous assumption that all Bardon-related things are relevant to your training, then identifying Bardon-related distractions should be just as easy as identifying general occult-related distractions. You just have to ask whether it is really helping you advance, and then try to answer this question as objectively and honestly as possible. These days, most people know that a beginning student who is trying to evoke Choronzon using the Enochian calls has become distracted from his training. Someday in the future, most people will also know that a beginning student who gets into an online argument about how well the teachings of KTQ align with the teachings of the Sepher Yetzirah has also become distracted from his training.

6. Falcon Books: The way that The Gift to be Simple is organized differs a bit from the way your previous books are organized. Is there a reason for this?

Virgil: It has to do with the way I wrote the book. I would sit down and an idea would come into my head. I would then try to work this idea into a chapter until another idea would come into my head. I’d then try to work that idea into a chapter until the next idea would come into my head. Often, a large number of ideas would come into my head in fairly rapid succession. That is why the book has a large number of very short chapters. My previous books weren’t written using this method. I’d outline each chapter, do research, and then spend a week or so writing each chapter. This time, I sensed a stream of ideas pertaining to simplicity flowing through my mind-space, and I wanted to capture this stream in some physically manifest form. That is how this book came to be.

7. Falcon Books: How much research did you have to do in order to write this book?

Virgil: It depends on how you define research. I did not spend any time sitting in libraries and studying books in order to obtain the information needed to write this book. In that sense, I didn’t do any research. However, this is a book about how to undergo magical training, and it is based on my own experience. So, you could consider all of the time I spent working through IIH to be time spent doing research for this book. In that case, I spent about twelve years doing research for this book.

8. Falcon Books: In this book, you write a lot about how important it is for students to be able to discriminate between the books that are relevant to them and the books that aren’t. You also state multiple times that not all Bardon-related books are relevant to every Bardon student. Can you explain why you emphasize these points so much?

Virgil: Yes. To really understand why I emphasize these points so much, it’s important to know that this book was written for future generations of students as well as the present generation. I’ve spoken with some of the Earth-zone spirits about the role the Bardon system was designed to play in the evolution of the human race, so I’ve seen glimpses of what’s coming. Right now, there are maybe two dozen or so Bardon-related books on the market. Someday, there will be so many Bardon-related books that you could spend years doing nothing but reading and still not get through them. When that day comes, it is imperative that students of the Bardon system be able to discriminate between the Bardon-related books that are actually relevant to them and the Bardon-related books that aren’t relevant to them. Of course, if you are a Bardon enthusiast, then there is no need for this sort of discrimination. You can buy as many books as you want. If you know Python, or Java, or some similar language, you can even write a computer program to identify when a new Bardon-related book has been published and automatically order it. But that’s not what I did. I don’t know any Bardon-trained magicians who did anything like that. We all discriminate between relevant books and irrelevant books and don’t read the irrelevant books, unless it is purely for enjoyment or because we want to support the author. As for books that aren’t Bardon-related, there are already more of those than anyone could possibly read in one lifetime, so even in the present period of time there is already a need for discrimination. If people know that not every Bardon-related book is relevant to them, then they will certainly know that not every general esoteric book is relevant to them. Sometimes the students who correspond with me will tell me which spiritual books they are reading and I’ll think to myself that watching Netflix would be just as productive as reading those books. Lack of discrimination is a real problem, partly because people don’t understand the necessity of discrimination.

9. Falcon Books: You are known to discourage people from buying your books if your books are not relevant to their current stage of training. What kind of people will not find The Gift to be Simple relevant to them at their current stage of training?

Virgil: Those who have a great deal of common sense, who appreciate the value of time, and who know how to discriminate have no need for this book, so it is not relevant to them. Their money would be better spent on other things besides purchasing this book, and their time would be better spent on other activities besides reading this book.

10. Falcon Books: One of this book’s biggest themes is the importance of not wasting one’s time and energy. What is the most important advice you have for those wanting to identify the ways they are currently wasting their time and energy?

Virgil: Learn to think for yourself. Otherwise, you will be forced to rely on others for guidance, and this will not end well. Different people have different ideas about what is or isn’t a waste of time and energy. Some people might think a certain exercise is a good use of one’s time and energy, while others might think it isn’t. Similarly, some people might think that reading a certain book is a good use of one’s time and energy, while others might think it isn’t. If you can’t think for yourself and are forced to rely on others, you will be very confused.

11. Falcon Books: Is there anything you think people reading this book should know?

Virgil: This book attempts to answer the following question:

Why do some people spend many years on Step 1 while other people work through the entirety of IIH in the same amount of time?

What I want people to know is that this question has multiple correct answers. The answer this book gives is that the people who spend many years stuck on Step 1 aren’t truly focused on their progress. Of the various correct answers to the question, this is the one I thought would be the most useful for the most number of students at this point in time. However, people should know that there are other correct answers as well. Perhaps someday I will write books about the other correct answers, but for now, it is enough for people to know that they should be focused.

12. Falcon Books: You requested that we publish The Gift to be Simple before your next book, A Tiara of Pearls, even though the manuscript for A Tiara of Pearls was completed before the manuscript for The Gift to be Simple was. Is there a reason you wanted The Gift to be Simple published first?

Virgil: Yes. A Tiara of Pearls wasn’t written to be a sequel to The Gift to be Simple. Each is a distinct book, and they aren’t meant to be part of a series. Yet, A Tiara of Pearls is a book that only serious students of the Bardon system will appreciate. After reading The Gift to be Simple, people may have a better understanding of what it really means to be a serious student of the Bardon system. That is why I thought it made more sense for The Gift to be Simple to be published first.